A University of Texas sociologist is being investigated for scientific
“misconduct,” after angering gay activists with research suggesting
children raised by same-sex couples have more problems as adults.

That's the big study that got headlines a few weeks ago because it calls into question all the minor studies suggesting that kids of gay parents are no different than kids of heterosexual parents. Questions about its research methods have been raised.

We'll have to see if the study really is in some way fraudulent or this is a PC investigation. It smacks of the latter.

A July 11 article in the Austin American-Statesman indicated that one
of Regnerus' fiercest critics, Scott Rosensweig of the “New Civil
Rights Movement” blog, may have played a leading role in the
university's decision to investigate.
The blogger, who writes for
the gay activist site under the name “Scott Rose,” accused Regnerus of
ethical violations in a June 21 letter to University of Texas President
Bill Powers.
Rosensweig told the president that Regnerus' study
was “designed so as to be guaranteed to make gay people look bad,
through means plainly fraudulent and defamatory.”He also claimed
that Regnerus, who got funding from the Witherspoon Institute and the
Bradley Foundation for his work, had done the research with “money from
an anti-gay political organization.”

Mark Regnerus, the sociologist in question, in a series of interviews and blog posts, has defended against most of the criticisms already:

“I had no idea what the data would reveal,” he said, “but it's
revealed far greater instability in the households of parents who've had
same-sex relationships.”
His findings, he said, should be
evaluated by the standards of “normal science,” not ideology. He
described the criticisms being leveled as “disproportionate to the
study's limitations,” which could be legitimately critiqued.
Regnerus
addressed other criticisms in a series of blog posts that accompanied
the publication of his findings. The conservative Witherspoon Institute,
he said, “had nothing to do with the study design, or with the data
analyses, or interpretations, or the publication of the study.”
The
sociologist also said his Catholic beliefs did not compromise the
research. “There’s no 'Christian' approach to sampling or 'Catholic' way
of crunching numbers,” he remarked.

“Any trained
methodologist, data manager, and statistician can locate the same
patterns I reported. Others may ask different questions, or follow
different decision rules on measures. But that’s normal science.”

Puzzling to me is, in spite of the crowing from the usual groups in defense of marriage, I'm not sure the study actually tells us anything about gay parenting qua gay. It says a lot about unstable households. It's a devastating critique of unwed parenting, divorce, and the comings and goings of partners as all very bad for children (for this we needed a study?). But I would think the gay groups would take that as an argument for gay marriage: "we're only unstable because you won't let us marry." Not an argument I buy, but the one I would predict.